Envisioning the future state of how people interact with and trust their autonomous vehicle system

Through four months of research, discussion, and creation, my team members Tina Park, Max Plummer and I illustrated a world in which autonomous technology afforded our client, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) a new opportunity for a temporary ownership service. Our pitch is a service built to enhance the shared mobility while simultaneously adapting FCA to the dynamic and ephemeral ownership model of the future.

Challenge: To prepare for new ownership values in a future of autonomous transportation experiences.

Design Opportunity: Rethinking car ownership through a platform to lease brand vehicles with autonomous features for an allotted amount of time based on occasion.

Why? The values behind car ownership are changing with Millennial preferences and future generations, and autonomous technology will be a catalyst to accelerate these changes.

FCA 2030

A Brand lease system that empowers the individual customer to decide what type of vehicle, amenities, and service they need depending on the context of their trip.

Brand Lease Service

Meet the Watson Family. How would FCA autonomous vehicles be at the center of their family traveling experiences? How can we empower people to decide what type of vehicle, amenities, and service they need depending on the context of their trip?

A System for Scheduling Autonomous Vehicles

How would family members stay connected in a moving system and in their daily lives?

Research

Reframing Car Ownership

The semester began with exploratory secondary research and developed to primary research methods as we established a focus. Using workshops and interviews, we gauged millennial values and cross referenced these findings against broader data to form an in-depth understanding of how the young community views ownership of automobiles.

Initial Questions and STEEP Forces

Social: What is a car to people? How will people be working and playing in the next generation? How will their lifestyles, behaviors, and interactions change as technology and future advances affect planning, infrastructure, and everyday living?

Technology: What autonomous technology features do people trust?

Environmental: How will urban, suburban, and rural areas be affected by autonomous systems? Can cities become smarter and greener because of changes to transportation systems?

Economic: How could our economy be different if transportation becomes more about ride sharing than individual car ownership?

Political: What laws need to be passed to enable autonomous vehicles? How will car insurance and safety protocols work in the future?

Explorative and Generative Research

We designed a survey and had people draw what they wanted inside their autonomous vehicle. We had 43 responses. There were the two perspectives that we found:

1. Those who preserve old values in car ownership

Individual ownership and control

Freedom

Privacy

2. Those who are embracing new values in temporary ownership

Shared ownership

Trust in technology and technology trends

Customization and leisure

Generative Workshop: Draw your dream autonomous vehicle

The Main Takeaways. Key insights from when people drew their dream autonomous vehicle were:

different modes of leisure, enjoyment, and theexperience of the journey

hope for a sustainable future and features built into their vehicle

no one drew their smartphones inside their vehicle

Affinity Diagramming

In order to identify the scope of the problem space we are trying to solve, we affinity diagrammed the the insights and thoughts we collected. We organized the categories into the following:

Moving creates new opportunities and routines

Moving in public (together) and private (individual) modes

Moving to solve problems

Moving objects

Moving transitions and shifts culture

Stakeholder Map

Designing for Cultural Shift

User Persona

FCA Brand Lease Service Blueprint

We visualized a service blueprint to clarify all interactions involving produce devices, stakeholders, and FCA's service.

Video Process

We chose to tell our story using stop-motion because it invites playful thinking without too much promise of resolved detail. Our pitch needed to be optimistic and high-level, telling about what could be rather than telling a what could go wrong story. Thus, our process in creating the video was playful and fun to reach the essence of family traveling that we learned from our research, while considering the wider context of introducing autonomous technology.

FCA Presentation

We presented our project to FCA UX designers and executives, including Senior Vice President of Design, Ralph Gilles!